George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

approaching, one of them runs behind the camera and

pretends to take a photograph. Then as the victim reaches

them, they exclaim:

"There y'are, Sir, took yer photo lovely. That'll be a

bob."

"But I never asked you to take it," protests the victim.

"What, you didn't want it took? Why, we thought

you signalled with your 'and. Well, there's a plate wasted!

That's cost us sixpence, that 'as."

At this the victim usually takes pity and says he will

have the photo after all. The photographers examine the

plate and say that it is spoiled, and that they will take a

fresh one free of charge. Of course, they have not really

taken the first photo; and so, if the victim refuses, they

waste nothing.

Organ-grinders, like acrobats, are considered artists

rather than beggars. An organ-grinder named Shorty, a

friend of Bozo's, told me all about his trade. He and his

mate "worked" the coffee-shops and public-houses round

Whitechapel and the Commercial Road. It is a mistake to

think that organ-grinders earn their living in the street;

nine-tenths of their money is taken in coffee-shops and

pubs-only the cheap pubs, for they are not allowed into

the good-class ones. Shorty's procedure was to stop

outside a pub and play one tune, after which his mate,

who had a wooden leg and could excite compassion, went

in and passed round the hat. It was a point of honour

with Shorty always to play another tune after receiving

the "drop"an encore, as it were; the idea being that he

was a genuine entertainer and not merely paid to go

away. He and his mate took two or three pounds a week

between them, but, as they had to pay fifteen shillings a

week for the hire of the organ, they only averaged a

pound a week each. They were on the streets from eight

in the morning till ten at night, and later on Saturdays.

Screevers can sometimes be called artists, sometimes

not. Bozo introduced me to one who was a "real" artist-

that is, he had studied art in Paris and submitted

pictures to the Salon in his day. His line was copies of

Old Masters, which he did marvellously,

considering that he was drawing on stone. He told me

how he began as a screever:

"My wife and kids were starving. I was walking home

late at night, with a lot of drawings I'd been taking round

the dealers, and wondering how the devil to raise a bob

or two. Then, in the Strand, I saw a fellow kneeling on

the pavement drawing, and people giving him pennies. As

I came past he got up and went into a pub. 'Damn it,' I

thought, 'if he can make money at that, so can L' So on

the impulse I knelt down and began drawing with his

chalks. Heaven knows how I came to do it; I must have

been lightheaded with hunger. The curious thing was

that I'd never used pastels before; I had to learn the

technique as I went along. Well, people began to stop and

say that my drawing wasn't bad, and they gave me nine-

pence between them. At this moment the other fellow

came out of the pub. 'What in are you doing on my

pitch?' he said. I explained that I was hungry and had to

earn something. 'Oh,' said he, 'come and have a pint with

me.' So I had a pint, and since that day I've been a

screever. I make a pound a week. You can't keep six kids

on a pound a week, but luckily my wife earns a bit taking

in sewing.

"The worst thing in this life is the cold, and the next

worst is the interference you have to put up with. At

first, not knowing any better, I used sometimes to copy a

nude on the pavement. The first I did was outside St.

Martin's-in-the-Fields church. A fellow in blackI suppose

he was a churchwarden or somethingcame out in a

tearing rage. 'Do you think we can have that obscenity

outside God's holy house?' he cried. So I had to wash it

out. It was a copy of Botticelli's Venus. Another time I

copied the same picture on the Embankment. A

policeman passing looked at it, and

then, without a word, walked on to it and rubbed it out

with his great flat feet."

Bozo told the same tale of police interference. At the

time when I was with him there had been a case of

"immoral conduct" in Hyde Park, in which the police had

behaved rather badly. Bozo produced a cartoon of Hyde

Park with policemen concealed in the trees, and the

legend, "Puzzle, find the policemen." I pointed out to him

how much more telling it would be to put, "Puzzle, find

the immoral conduct," but Bozo would not hear of it. He

said that any policeman who saw it would move him on,

and he would lose his pitch for good.

Below screevers come the people who sing hymns, or

sell matches, or bootlaces, or envelopes containing a few

grains of lavender-called, euphemistically, perfume. All

these people are frankly beggars, exploiting an appearance

of misery, and none of them takes on an average more

than half a crown a day. The reason why they have to

pretend to sell matches and so forth instead of begging

outright is that this is demanded by the absurd English

laws about begging. As the law now stands, if you

approach a stranger and ask him for twopence, he can call

a policeman and get you seven days for begging. But if

you make the air hideous by droning "Nearer, my God, to

Thee," or scrawl some chalk daubs on the pavement, or

stand about with a tray of matches-in short, if you make a

nuisance of yourself-you are held to be following a

legitimate trade and not begging. Match-selling and street-

singing are simply legalised crimes. Not profitable crimes,

however; there is not a singer or match-seller in London

who can be sure of £5o a year-a poor return for standing

eighty-four hours a week on the kerb, with the cars

grazing your backside.

It is worth saying something about the social position

of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and

found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot

help being struck by the curious attitude that society

takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is

some essential difference between beggars and ordinary

"working" men. They are a race apart, outcasts, like

criminals and prostitutes. Working men "work," beggars

do not "work"; they are parasites, worthless in their very

nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not

"earn" his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic

"earns" his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated

because we live in a humane age, but essentially

despicable.

Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no

essential

difference between a beggar's livelihood and that

of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it

is said; but, then, what is

work ? A navvy works by

swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up

figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all

weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis,

etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course -

but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as

a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others.

He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent

medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday

newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-

purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless

parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from

the community, and, what should justify him according to

our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.

I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets

him in a different class from other people, or gives most

modern men the right to despise him.

Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised? -

for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the

simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In

practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless,

productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it

shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy,

efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning

is there except "Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of

it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this

test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one

could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would

become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar,

looked at realistically, is simply a business man, getting

his living, like other business men, in the way that comes

to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold

his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing

a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

XXXII

I WANT to put in some notes, as short as possible, on

London slang and swearing. These (omitting the ones

that everyone knows) are some of the cant words now

used in London:

A gagger-beggar or street performer of any kind. A

moocher-one who begs outright, without pretence of

doing a trade. A nobbler-one who collects pennies for a

beggar. A chanter-a street singer. A clodhopper -a street

dancer. A mugfaker-a street photographer. A glimmer-

one who watches vacant motor-cars. A gee (or jee-it is

pronounced jee)-the accomplice of a cheapjack, who

stimulates trade by pretending to buy

something. A split-a detective. A flattie-a policeman. A

dideki-a gypsy. A toby-a tramp.

A drop-money given to a beggar. Funkumlavender or

other perfume sold in envelopes. A boozer -a public-

house. A slang-a hawker's licence. A kip -a place to

sleep in, or a night's lodging. SmokeLondon. A judy-a

woman. The spike-the casual ward. The lump-the casual

ward. A tosheroon-a half-crown. A denner-a shilling. A

hog-a shilling. A sprowsie-a sixpence. Clods-coppers. A

drum-a billy can. Shackles-soup. A chat-a louse. Hard-

up-tobacco made from cigarette ends. A stick or cane -a

burglar's jemmy. A peter-a safe. A bly-a burglar's oxy-

acetylene blow-lamp

To bawl-to suck or swallow. To knock off-to steal. To

skipper-to sleep in the open.

About half of these words are in the larger diction-

aries. It is interesting to guess at the derivation of some

of them, though one or two-for instance, "funkum" and

"tosheroon"-are beyond guessing. "Deaner" presumably

comes from "denier." "Glimmer" (with the verb "to

glim") may have something to do with the old word

"glim," meaning a light, or another old word "glim,"

meaning a glimpse; but it is an instance of the formation

of new words, for in its present sense it can hardly be

older than motor-cars. "Gee" is a curious word;

conceivably it has arisen out of "gee," meaning horse, in

the sense of stalking horse. The derivation of "screever"

is mysterious. It must come ultimately from scribo, but

there has been no similar word in English for the past

hundred and fifty years; nor can it have come directly

from the French, for pavement artists are unknown in

France. "Judy" and "bawl" are East End words, not

found west of Tower Bridge. "Smoke" is a word used

only by tramps. "Kip" is Danish. Till quite recently

the word "doss" was used in this sense, but it is now